Stretch With Me

"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Can using Splenda shorten your Lifespan?

According to wikipedia, the thymus gland produces a protein called telomerase, which enables your cells to keep dividing. So living a long time could depend upon having a healthy thymus gland.

There are indications that the artificial sweetener Splenda can shrink the thymus gland by 40%! Personally, anything remotely connected to negatively impacting the ability of my cells to divide is NOT going in my body.

I saw this allegation about the thymus on quite a few web sites, but the only concrete reference I could find to the actual study was on Whole Foods website. Good going Whole Foods. I shop there all the time.

Personally, I would stay aware from all sugar substitutes and other additives. "Whole foods" are the way to go!

Monday, November 22, 2004

The more and more I hear about the effects of nutrition, the more I am convinced that nutrition should be the number one area of study and investment for public health. So many of the cronic conditions people are experiencing are due to their eating habits. And the US government seems to be promoting as many bad habits as good ones.

Saturday, November 20, 2004

Taxi2000

I think its significant that Taxi2000 is a private initiative. Public workswith access to your taxes frequently overlooks the simpler, lower-cost, elegantsolutions.

For example, the traffic circle or rounabout. Theres a high traffic road nearmy house that they just keep widening, but traffic would travel three timesfaster if the intersections were replaced with traffic circles. Which is thesolution used in places where traffic lights are too expensive.

Monday, November 01, 2004

Fixing Computer and Internet Security

Well, I don't have a long, detailed proposal on this, but I don't think the solution to spam, spyware, unwanted porn and predation is that complicated.

What we need is a partial end to anonymity. We should be able to interact electronically with only those who state who they are and who can be held accountable for their actions.

This is called playing in a sandbox. We should be able to play in a sandbox if we so desire or play outside.

We should be able to specify that we don't want applications installed on our computers unless the creator is registered and complying with established rules of conduct on my machine.

We should be able specify that only those individuals and companies that I have established a relationship with me may contact me by phone, cell phone, email or snail mail. And I should be able to review and dissolve these relationships as I please.

The technology exists to do all of this. Some of it we can do without the government's help (such as establishing certificate-based email). Other things, such as putting you in control of what mail can go to your house, requires radically changes in thinking, policy and numerous other factors.

But its all worth doing, as these technologies exist to serve the people, not commerce solely and certainly not those that use them to exploit and deceive others.